


is this your pain i taste or is it just love

by bubbyheart



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, F/M, Family, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-24 23:39:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubbyheart/pseuds/bubbyheart
Summary: Post 5x17 events. Rated M for later chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

"That's me. _I_ love you."

If it weren't for the anger in her voice, he would never have believed that she said it. Those words. How long had they been waiting? How long had he been waiting? But it was that edge in her voice, that anger that told him she was nearly at breaking point. When Melinda was upset, she usually got angry. It was angry or cry, and really, Melinda didn't cry in front of anyone. 

Except him. Except him, all those years in Bahrain. Maybe he should have known back. Maybe he should've known then, that somehow, in some way, they were always fated to be here someday. Reach this point. Together. All those years, dancing around 'You mean a lot to me', long lingering looks when they thought the other person wasn't looking, the raised eyebrows by Daisy (and eventually Mack). The times his hand glowed just when she was around. The times he just wanted to be in the same room as her, breathe the same air as she did, the times he wanted her to be happy, even if that happiness was being away from him and SHIELD.

Phil usually tried pretty hard not to believe in destiny - it was kind of hard for him to, given the number of alien incidents in his life and miraculous back-from-death incidents - but sometimes he couldn't help himself. Looks like this was going to be one of those times.

His brain was working a million times faster than the rest of his body could keep up. Wasn't often that Phil 'Mr Communications' Coulson was speechless. 

\------------

While the rest of him was trying to keep up, Melinda threw out a "I thought that would shut you up" towards Phil's direction before she stalked away into the darkness.

She didn't care. She didn't care. She didn't care. But no matter how many times she tried telling herself that, it wasn't working. Few things in life scared May, really. But it wasn't because she was strong, or brave, or fearless. It was because she didn't have much left to lose. She had already lost Andrew, she had lost her chance at a family, heck, she even lost the best part of her career after Bahrain. What else was left? Before she came on the Bus, she had at best a handful of old friends. Maria. Bobbi. A couple of others, same line of work, same common understanding about the sorts of boundaries that they drew around different parts of their lives. This line here, so they could have a shower, sleep without thinking about blood or loss or dead bodies or orders they didn't to follow. This other line there, to protect the few other people they still cared about. This line here to keep them feeling like themselves. Sure, she had a couple other things that mattered. Her parents, who still loved her, even if they weren't the best at showing it. But she wasn't sure there was much else to lose. When Fury had told her that Phil died in New York the first time, she felt like she had been hollowed out. Standing before his grave at his funeral, she wondered whether if they cut her open, they'd find anything inside her, or just the raw, gaping hole where Phil and her love for him was. But she buried her feelings at the same time that she buried him, tossing shovels of gravel on top of him. If he had been there, he'd have made some dumb wisecrack. Something about how the gravel was itchy and she always knew he was ticklish. Fuck. Fuck. Fucking Phil. Fucking leaving her here. Why did he have to go die then? And why was he in such a hurry to die now? 

Memory lane had made her feel worse, not better. She'd lost him once. This was even worse. Now she had him to lose again. Him and their dysfunctional family with too many robot hands. Fuck. You can stand just about anything when you're already at rock bottom. She hadn't been at rock bottom for months, years now. Slowly, somehow Phil had rescued her and their band of misfits and made them into something real, something tangible, something she didn't want to lose. Couldn't lose. That was the thing about Phil. He had this irritating, amazing, habit of worming his way into your heart and making you care, even if you were determined not to.

Her feet were moving, but she wasn't really sure where she was going. Where was there to go anyway? They were stuck in the Lighthouse. She and her feelings and that stupid, dying idiot. But her feet kept moving anyway. 

\-----------

"Hey, do you think -" 

Daisy's voice echoed through the corridors, getting louder as he heard footsteps coming towards him. Funny, May's voice hadn't been that loud but it still seemed to be reverberating in his head. And his heart. 

"Uhh. Um. Coulson?" 

The footsteps stopped. Daisy's voice was almost a whisper.

"Did... something.. happen? What's wrong? I just saw May running out of here and -"

"Yeah." 

"Yeah, what? She looked like she was on the brink of tears, and you look like you just got punched in the gut. What the hell is going on?" 

Phil wondered for a brief second why there were so many women asking him unanswerable questions today. 

"I just.. I... I... I don't know, May came and we haven't been talking and she's so mad and I keep dying and, and, and I can't do this and I can't -". Phil couldn't even meet Daisy's eyes.

Whatever Daisy had expected, it wasn't this. The world was ending, everything was falling apart, and somehow instead of being overjoyed that they were finally reunited, May and Coulson were having some kind of emotional breakdown. You know, May and Coulson. The two people who always had each other's backs. Sure, they had fights, they'd been angry or frustrated with each other before, but in none of those instances did either of them look like this. This was a mixture of anger with a hard edge of desperation, shot through with a profound misery, with some undercurrent Daisy couldn't even put into words.

"Coulson. Breathe. BREATHE." "I don't need to know what happened. That's between you. But I think you should go after May. You.. you don't know this, but she was really chewed out when you were gone. She'd have done anything to get you back. Go to her."

Phil finally looked up for a brief moment. The glimmer in his eye could almost have been mistaken for a trick of the light if it hadn't been so damn dark. But anyway the look of his face, profound gratitude for her silence and for not forcing him to speak, that look spoke volumes. 

"Go."

He went.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Phil tries to get his head in order, but gets interrupted.

With Daisy fading into the background and this strange persistent roaring in his ears, Phil went back down the hallway. He would've moved faster, he swore, if he didn't feel like he'd been hit in the face with Captain America's shield, if it didn't feel like there were shards of glass through his chest. And these weren't just from the effects of his Ghost Rider deal either. (He'd physically checked, by pressing his hand to his chest. Nope, poison still there, hypothetical-imaginary shards of glass felt way worse.)

Ghost Rider deal. Right. Yep. That thing May was yelling about. Well, actually the thing she hadn't yelled about, not when he first told the team he was dying, not when he told them not to save him, not when he chose to give himself up to Hale. Nope. Just those words where she said _you don't get to make those decisions alone, they should be made with the people who love you, that's me_. _I love you_. 

How had he wound up screwing this up? He didn't want to think too much about it, mistakes always hurt. Fury always said you had to examine the mistake, look it over, then put it down, so you didn't make the same mistake or make a different one trying to pretend it didn't happen. Unfortunately, Phil hadn't always been a quick study when it came to actually taking orders, particularly ones from Fury. It made him a pretty good leader now, but he knew Fury would've said "I told you so." Fury had always liked Melinda.

Melinda, Melinda, Melinda. Somehow it always came back to her.

Anyway, he knew damn well how he had ended up here, with a heap of colossally stupid decisions. May had been right, he knew that much. He'd been reckless. The decisions had been stupid. What she didn't know was that they started because of her. Well, her and her LMD. It was kind of hard to keep them straight, even after some time. For some time now things seemed like they were changing. She was softer somehow, the gazes between them lingering just a fraction too long. When she touched him, it was like fireworks under his skin. Sometimes literal fireworks, when his hand started glowing. Even Fitz hadn't been able to do anything about that. He'd gone into the other dimension, and seeing Melinda so distraught when she couldn't find him, her desperation to the point that she wanted to use the Darkhold, all that gave him some hope. Lit something in him which he'd given up on a long time ago.

He'd always been drawn to her, but then Andrew happened, and Bahrain happened, and he was always off on missions, the Avengers initiative was taking off, and they spent less and less time around each other. When they did, the silences between them were full of heavy, unspoken things that couldn't be said.

_I'm sorry that you and Andrew didn't work out. I'm sorry about Bahrain. I'm sorry I'm always away. I'm sorry I can't tell you what I'm doing. I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

_I'm sorry I can't be the old me. The me before Bahrain. I'm sorry I let you down, I'm sorry I can't be your partner anymore, I'm sorry I can't get over it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry._

But New York happened, TAHITI happened, Fury happened, she came to the Bus. There were ups and downs, but it seemed like they were in a good place. A _different_ place. And seeing her desperation, her panic when he disappeared, made him vow to himself that if he really did make it back, they were cracking that bottle of Haig.

And so they did, after getting trapped together with each other by AIDA, they really did open that bottle, and it was everything he'd dreamed of. That night, he'd dreamed good dreams. And then later, when they were in the library, they'd kissed. The Kiss. It was good, but he barely had the time to process it before she'd pulled a gun on him, tried to take the Darkhold, and he realised she wasn't Melinda after all. Just her LMD. 

He'd felt so stupid, so so so stupid afterwards. It wasn't that he didn't believe she didn't feel anything for him. It wasn't that at all. He'd seen her desperation and fear before, and that was her, not her LMD. But what he did feel was an overwhelming sense of guilt. Guilt. He'd not picked up that the woman who flirted shyly with him, the one who looked up at him with eyes that seemed to hold the whole world, the one who'd kissed him, was not the woman he'd loved for years. And because of that, she'd been locked up in a mind prison created by Radcliffe, fighting him the whole time, fighting her worst nightmares the whole time, then being dumped into the Framework. A Framework where she got to live in a world which was somehow even sadder, even more desolate, even more desperate than her life had been in this world after Bahrain. Who knew not saving the girl had actually led less pain for May in the long term?

Yet, despite that, she'd followed him, jumping through a portal that could only be opened by the earthquake superpowers of a girl who she'd never met. "Just follow my lead", he'd said. And despite the fact that they were complete strangers, there had been some kind of bond, something that was enough for her to take that leap of faith and jump. Hell, he wasn't sure if he'd have done it in her position. And then she'd clung to him when she came out, with that sweetest of sweet smiles. "I followed you", she said. Yes she did.

And that was the problem. She'd follow him anywhere. And all it was doing was causing her pain. _He_ was causing her pain. Because he'd been so wrapped up in his own feelings, he hadn't noticed that she wasn't her, he should have known somehow. She didn't know it, but her questions after she came out of the Framework had really hurt. "It took you that long, huh?" Salt in the wounds. He knows he failed her, knows he should have done better. And that was why he'd agreed to the Ghost Rider deal and made all these subsequent reckless choices. Making the deal saved her, saved everyone. Making the reckless choices... well, he meant what he'd said, he wasn't in a hurry to die. He didn't actually want to die, and sometimes he wanted to live so badly that it was a sharp physical pain. The kind of pain he got when he saw Yo-Yo smile for the first time after the Incident, when he hugged Daisy and she said 'Don't you ever leave again', the kind of pain he got when he thought of Fitzsimmons babies. The kind of pain he got every single time he saw Melinda's face. But at the same time he wasn't trying to stop death from coming either.  He was already dying anyway, going more quickly just meant less pain for May, so she wouldn't need to keep following him and putting herself in danger. Especially since he was a royal idiot. And maybe this would atone for his guilt, that guilt for the LMD, the guilt that sometimes suddenly rose up in him about how he'd treated her over TAHITI, that guilt. 

He loved her, that wasn't the problem. He just wasn't good enough for her. She could do so much better. Sometimes he thought it might actually be easier if he loved her less. Maybe the guilt would've been less overwhelming. Maybe, maybe. 

Somewhere in the distance, the infirmary alarm goes off.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tension between Coulson and May continues. Draws on 5x18.

The harsh alarm of the infirmary reverberated throughout the Lighthouse. Phil snapped out of his daze and ran towards the infirmary. Along the way he head the distant sounds of groans, the harsh clatter of medical instruments, the slamming of doors, the rushed footsteps heading in the same direction.

Light footsteps. Footsteps he'd know anywhere. 

May. 

As he turned around the corner, she nearly ran into him. Of course, she'd known he was there all along, so she deftly side-stepped him, gave him a Look, and then continued on towards the infirmary just like nothing had happened.

Which was technically correct. Nothing since that big reveal had happened. And whose fault was that exactly?

"Good job, Phil. Good job," he mentally chastised himself.

Just then, Mack and Yo-Yo came barreling down the corridor. With a final muttered "Get a grip", Phil followed them to the infirmary. 

By then, the infirmary was already a flurry of action. Deke was in the bed, seizing violently, Daisy struggling to hold his hands and legs down. Jemma was in full Jemma mode, barking orders crisply at Fitz, who was diving in and out of piles of equipment trying to find all the pieces Jemma was asking for, while Jemma shouted out various heartrate, blood pressure and other readings in Fitz's direction. Mack dived right in to help Daisy hold Deke down, Yo-Yo was moving boxes out of the way to give Jemma and Fitz room to work, and May was removing anything within reach of Deke from him so he couldn't hurt himself anymore. 

His team. His family. Watching them all together made his heart hurt in a way he never thought would be possible. If he had known what he knew now. If he had known, would that have made a difference? 

"Another 10 ccs, Fitz!" 

"I'm coming, I'm coming... uhh... yes, got it!" 

Jemma injected Deke, and then there was nothing left to do but cross their fingers and wait. May and Yo-Yo had come around the side of the bed, May towards him and Yo-Yo further away. There wasn't much room between May and him - the room was pretty small after all - but it might as well have been the entire Atlantic Ocean. She wasn't even looking at him. Studiously looking away, eyes anywhere but him. A quick dart of her eyes up towards him - hah, knew she had a tick, thought a small part of Phil -  her eyes filled with hurt and anger and frustration, a blink and then they were lowered, trained on Deke's blanket, trained on Daisy's hands on Deke. 

By then, Deke's breathing had slowed and stabilised. Phil let out a sigh he didn't even know he was holding. Even Deke had gotten to him, for god's sake. But Deke was still a sign of what might be, what is yet to come, future and possibility and _hope_  in a single person, and sometimes it hurt so badly when he saw Deke. Deke was a symbol of everything he hoped for, everything there was to live for, but everything that he had given up. 

"We don't really know what happened, but we're so far from the edge of normal anyway that that's hardly surprising. Fitz and I will monitor him and figure out what happened, but you all don't need to be here. Go get some rest."

Mack and Yo-Yo were the first to leave, Mack's hand curled over Elena's shoulder. She didn't shrug him off, a small step in the tens of thousands she had left to walk. But one step was still progress. Daisy tucked Deke's arms under the blanket with Jemma's help, Fitz was off in a corner somewhere sorting out the mess he'd made in the process of finding whatever it is Jemma needed. May - _Melinda_ \- was still there, eyes trained on Deke with the studious attention of someone desperately trying not to think about something else. With the razor sharp intensity that stopped anything else from bleeding through. Specialists and their training, he thought. 

"We need to do something. Not just sit here. We should take the offensive, go down and take out Ruby and get the gravitonium out of play."

Daisy. She really was growing up. And he wouldn't be there to see it, and it was all his fault. 

She stood up, facing them both. "May, we'll go down together. Get it done. Come back up. Simple op." 

She'd clocked the distance between them, their forced stares anywhere else but each other, both of them now focusing on Daisy with the intensity of a thousand suns. Her eyes narrowed, but she'd clearly decided that this wasn't the moment to call them out on it. Not touching, no smiles, a very careful gap between them, not looking at each other, and enough tension that she could've used it to choke Ward. Guess Coulson hadn't fixed the problem then. Men. Such idiots. 

A short, sharp nod from May is all she got. 

"What about me?" Phil blurted out.

"You're not going." May, her voice deathly still and silent. Daisy thought it was what pythons would sound like if they could talk. Ssssss. That was May. 

"I'm not?"

She didn't even look at him. The silence yawned between them. Now it's getting really awkward, Daisy thought. The looks and longing were embarrassing, in a Mom-and-Dad are being romantically disgusting kind of way, but them fighting-not-really-fighting was way worse. 

"I'm not? I mean, I'm not. Okay." 

She swept out of the room. 

Daisy raised an eyebrow at Phil. "Thought I told you to talk to her? Ugh. Now I have to be out with a pissed May. She's going to want to hit things, and she's not going to like it when I tell her to stop. Thanks _so much_ for that. Please try not to do anything else to piss her off when I'm gone, A.C." 

She hadn't called him AC in years. But when she did, it brought him back to the days when she'd just come to the bus, when she was still Skye, looking for her parents. Before Afterlife, before Jiaying, before Inhumans, before so many things. She was so grown up now. The closest thing he'd ever have to a daughter. And she was going to have to bury him. Fuck. 

Phil buried his head in his hands so quickly he missed Fitz's sympathetic look from the corner. 

This day was just going from bad to worse. 


End file.
